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Swashbuckling Pirate Queen Captain Nicky Morgove has recently vowed to board so-called coasting schools, make the headteacher walk the plank, and academise the lot of them to within an inch of their worthless lives. With Nick Glibb, her faithful parrot, perched on her shoulder squawking ‘Progress 8, Progress 8‘, her only problem is how does she identify such schools coming up on the horizon? Indeed All Change Please! would be delighted to hear from anyone who can follow this method.

First, here are some definitions of ‘coasting’:

‘Performing a natural deceleration of a motor when the power is removed, or in railroading, the act of allowing a train or a car to run upon a down grade by its own gravity, without steam or electric power.’

This suggests that a ‘coasting’ school should be one which is running without any energy, and therefore gradually losing momentum, i.e., getting increasingly worse academic results year by year, however good or bad its intake.

“..whose results have either flat-lined…or where they haven’t improved as much as they could have”.

(But there again, what does he know?)

Meanwhile Ofsted’s ‘Man-O-War’ Mr Michael Offshore offered:

“coasting” schools – where performance, often in well-off areas, is not necessarily inadequate but has failed to impress.

(Likewise?)

But then just today, the DfE’s very own little treasure chest, Mad Cap’n Morgove finally announced her own, dictionary-defying definition of a Coasting school as being one where, whatever their intake, more than 60% have failed to achieve 5 A*to C GCSE passes and would as a consequence be doomed to be turned into an academy, despite the fact that no-one at the DfE has yet had the courage to tell her that many schools defined in this way will already be academies.

So until Mad Cap’n Morgove removes both her eye patches, checks the manual and sees what the issues and solutions really are, here’s All Change Please!‘s alternative Full Steam Ahead, Left-hand Down-a-bit, Shiver me Timbers, Shipshape Guide to our current Fleet of Schools…

The Sinking School

The main priority in this type of school is simply getting the kids to attend. The mainly supply staff do what they can, but have essentially given up on trying to significantly raise levels of academic achievement, because they know it’s a complete waste of time. Things are slowly falling apart, and if it’s not already, it will soon become an Academy – not that this will make much difference of course. However the school does form an essential part of the provision of social services in the area, and the parents will generally say that their children are very happy there.

The Coasting School

Coasting schools are making some effort and covering the basics fairly well, but over time, standards are starting to fall and there is no sense of pressure to improve. The engine has been switched off and they are happily drifting along. Expectations are moderate, and the staff seem content to remain where they are and avoid change as much as possible. There is probably an emphasis on the relationship with the local community, and it describes itself as a ‘caring’ school.

The Chugging School

In a chugging school, the standards achieved by the majority of children remain fairly constant. Some years the results are slightly better, or worse, than usual. Staff and students work steadily without exerting too much energy. There may be a moderate number of academic high-flyers who do extremely well. The headteacher and the SMT have been there for some time. Everything feels very secure and settled and there is no great sense of urgency or disruptive change. The parents say their children are quite content there and doing well enough. However, there is a growing concern that the school is likely to get turned into an Academy.

The Cruising School

In these schools the students are relaxed, but there are good expectations of what they can achieve within their own capabilities. Examination success is important, but not the only aspect of life that is valued and encouraged. The staff and students get on well together and there is a positive, friendly atmosphere. The school is steaming ahead with the just the right amount of effort, and there are some exciting initiatives being led by the staff. When there’s a storm brewing, intelligent changes of course are taken, with the result that interesting new ports are visited.

The Overheating School

Academic exam results, University entrance and League Table position are all that matters here. There’s a lot of steam, or rather hot-air emanating from Senior Management. The pressure is intense with every lesson placed in the context of fear of failure, based on an approach of shame and bullying of staff to ensure students succeed. The sense of competition is fierce. While most students pass their exams there is a significant drop-out rate at 6th form level, and absence due to the excessive pressure to perform. There is a high staff turnover, and the school is running close to breaking point due to the level of stress and strain on the infrastructure. The parents add to the pressure by demanding to know why their children are not all gifted and talented geniuses.

But, avast, me landlubbing hearties – it may be time to batten down the hatches, take to the crows nest and splice the mainbrace, but let’s not forget that one day in the not too distant future, all these ships – and the pirate politicians who sail them – are surely destined to be broken up in the great schoolyard in the sky?

If you’ve not watched it – in which case you really should – WIA is a BBC comedy satire of and about the BBC, being made for the BBC, by the BBC and by an amazing coincidence being shown on the BBC. Here, All Change Please! is proud to present its own slightly more educational version…

Voice Over:As it’s the day after yesterday and the day before tomorrow, today’s the day Nicky Moregove, Nick Bowels and Nick Glibb and various other people who are probably not as important as they’d like to think they are, are all meeting in Michael Gove, the new office suite at the Df-ingE.

Nicky Morgove: So anyway I think you should know I’ve been watching that great W1A fly-on-the-wall reality tv show. I must say it has given me a revealing insight about what it’s actually like to work at the BBC. And I really like the idea of them appointing a Director of Better.

Nick:Err.. Can I just point out that actually…

NM:No, you can’t Nick. So I was thinking we should maybe do some similar PR work to help try and convince teachers that we’re really quite normal, friendly types who want to work with them, even if we’re not. I’m mean, we’re totally listening to what they are saying, it’s just they’re not saying the right things.

Nick:Yes, but…

NM:Please be quiet Nick. As I was saying, as a result I’ve invited Perfect Curve, the same PR company that works for the BBC, here to outline in broad strokes some suggestions we can all take away with us to digest, circle back round and bring up again later. So I’ll hand you straight over to Siobhan Sharpe from Perfect Curve.

SS:Hi everyone! Thanks Nicky. Go Academies! Go Free Schools! Yeah. Well, we’ve thought about this a lot in an agile, brainstorming sort of way and kicked a whole shed load of ideas round the duck pond before coming to the conclusion that the decisions I made beforehand were the best anyway.

So building on this new BBC post for Director of Better, we came up with this concept that it would be really cool if every school was required to appoint a Head of Better to its Senior Management Team. But then we thought, hey, well if we’re going to do that, at the same time we could rebrand the Headteacher as the Head of Outstanding, and then to establish some sort of career progression by having middle managers called Head of Good and Head of Requires Improvement. Oh, and, you’re really going to like this guys, we’re going to rename Teachers as Learning Opportunity Engineers to make it all sound a bit more sciency and researchy.

Ensemble:Yes, very strong

Ens: I’m totally good with that

Ens:Sure yeah, way cool, OK. No worries. Say Again. That’s mental.

Nick:Err, I hate to be the one to problematise things, but I’m not going to beat around the Basil Brush, but we do have a recruitment crisis in the profession you know, so I don’t know exactly where all these Super Heads of Outstanding are going to come from?

Ens:Ah yes, no, good. Very good.

SS:OK, cool, yeah well, we’ve done some major conceptualisations about that too. So the thing is like that with the DfE, in branding terms it’s really boring. It’s like politics and funding and pedagogy. I mean, who’s interested in all that stuff? So what we’re talking here is like major brand refresh surgery.

To begin with we’ve been looking at the name DfE. By adding an exclamation mark at the end – DfE! – it gives more emphasis to the E, which of course stands for Education, which is what it’s all supposed to about, even though it isn’t. Then we need to change the name a bit to make it more engaging and compelling, so in future the acronym will stand for Damn Fine Education. And then of course it’s got sound as if it’s a synergetic, collaborative, character-building sort of organisation, so, as we learnt from the 2012 Olympics, finally it needs to become Team DfE!

Ens:I so love it!

Ens:Brilliant. No brainer…

Ens:This is all going terribly well.

SS:Then of course there are the SATS. So where we’re heading on this one is like to ask the question, ‘What’s the best day of the week?’ And our focus groups all told us ‘Saturday’. So we thought: SATurday? So in future children will all attend school every SATurday specifically to take new weekly SATs. Nicky told us that kids love doing tests and showing off how much they know, so they’ll be pleased. It’s a win-win thing of course because while the teachers are looking after their children for them, hard working parents will be happy as they will be able to take on extra work to help pay their mortgages.

Ens:Ah yes, that all sounds most SATisfactory!

Ens:No way. Cool.

Ens: Totally awesome.

SS:Meanwhile using our contacts at the BBC we’ve pitched some ideas for some new TV shows to increase the profile of Learning Opportunity Engineers in the community. They’re terribly excited about ‘Strictly Come Teaching’ in which B-list celebs are paired up with classroom teachers to see how really strict they can be in classrooms up and down the country. We love Strictly! And to cover inclusion, diversity, social mobility and equality, they’re bringing back Top Of The Form, but renamed ‘Top Of The Class‘ in which children from upper, middle and lower-class backgrounds will complete against each other to see who is actually the most entitled to get to a Russell Group University.

And of course in order to be completely transparent there will be a TV mockumentary that shows what it’s really like to work as a member of Team DfE! A bit like W1A is named after the BBC’s postcode, it’s going to be called ’Sanctuary’ after the name of this building. In fact they’ve already started work on it.

Nick:Ah I wondered what that camera crew were doing over in the corner.

SS:There’s just thing left to sort out though – the show will need a suitable voice over. With W1A of course we were able to get a previous Dr Who to do it. But we thought because it’s about schools, maybe we should like get The Master to do it, but he wasn’t available. So can anyone suggest someone who’s known to be highly devious, omnipresent and obsessed with total control and domination?

NM:Yes I can – in fact I think we’re probably sitting in him right now. Well thanks Siobhan. Of course we’ll to check it out with the DC, but I’m sure he’ll be on board with it. I mean it’s all about one-nation education isn’t it?

SS:Hey wait Nicky that sounds really good – One Nation Education – we must use that somewhere. ‘All for ONE and ONE for all’. Wow this is just so cool. Way To Go! Yay!

NM:So that’s all good then…

Voice Over – now confirmed as Michael Gove: So as the meeting ends, Nicky, Nick and Nick put away their distractive mobile phones and go off to enjoy a well earned break where they can fully digest their take-aways before their next meeting, where they hope they will be a great deal more distracted than they were at the last one. Over the next few weeks they are going to need to consider how well they will adapt when they all become wealthy, famous and respected, well-loved TV personalities. Hmm. Seeing as the whole education reform thing was my idea in the first place, it seems to me like there’s no justice in the world. But now I’m the Lord High Executioner, just you wait, I’ll be doing something about that. I’ve got a little list…they’ll none of them be missed.

While I’m no big fan of the new ‘Academies’, at least they provide a lucky few with the chance to access high standards of technical and vocational education in areas of the country where more traditional academically-focused schools have cleary failed to meet local needs and aspirations. But, no, it seems these institutions too must be judged on their academic performance…

“Improved life chances are however much less likely to be realised if the piece of paper academy students walk away with shows not a handful of academic subjects, but single qualifications with high values in the league tables yet low value in life.

The report said there probably were “exemplary academies with excellent curricula” but there were also those that “dazzle in the league tables” at the expense of a solid academic education.”